Lone worker safety in
oil, gas and fuel

Why lone working is sharper in this sector

Fuel and petrochemical work concentrates risk in exactly the places with the fewest people. A remote metering or pumping station is visited by one technician. A tank farm or depot is walked at night by a single operator. A forecourt or bunkering job is run solo. The site is hazardous, the task is routine, and for long stretches nobody is close enough to notice if something goes wrong. That is the gap: not that the work is unusually dangerous on a good day, but that on a bad day the person is alone when it matters most.

The hazards a lone worker alarm has to account for

Three things make this sector different from a general lone-working risk. First, a collapse can be silent and sudden: a gas exposure such as H2S, a slip from a tank or gantry, or simply a medical event leaves the worker unable to call for help, so any control that relies on them pressing a button has already failed. Second, the sites are often remote, with patchy or no mobile coverage, so an alarm has to survive a blackspot. Third, parts of the site are classified hazardous areas, which limits what equipment can even be carried in.

An honest assessment plans for the worst version of each: the worker who cannot reach for a phone, the station with no signal, and the zone where an ordinary handset is not allowed.

What good cover looks like

The controls that actually close the gap do not wait for the worker to act. Automatic man-down and no-movement detection raise the alarm on a collapse without a button press, carrying the worker's location with it. Timed check-ins, sized to the task rather than a token hourly tap, escalate the moment one is missed. A one-tap SOS covers the times the worker sees trouble coming.

Just as important is what happens after the trigger. Rather than a single contact who might not answer, the alarm follows an ordered escalation chain, the duty manager and then the nearest available responder, across push, SMS, WhatsApp and voice, with a precise what3words location attached so help goes to the right gantry or station, not the main gate.

Remote and off-grid sites

Pumping stations, metering points and pipeline sites are frequently beyond mobile coverage, which is where most lone-worker apps quietly stop working. Off-grid satellite SOS raises the alarm where there is no signal at all, and where even that is not fitted, timed check-ins still protect the worker: a missed check-in escalates on schedule to a named responder, and alerts queue and send the moment signal returns rather than being lost in the blackspot.

The ATEX point most apps skip

A lone worker app is software, and software is only as compliant as the device it runs on. In a classified hazardous area, Zone 1 or 2, the handset or wearable itself must be intrinsically safe and ATEX certified, because an ordinary phone is a potential ignition source and is not permitted past the line. The practical answer is to run the protection on an ATEX-rated handset where the worker enters classified zones, and a standard device everywhere else. Any supplier who ignores this is selling you a control you cannot legally use where you most need it.

Evidencing it for COMAH and HSE

Lone working in this sector is rarely a question of whether you have a system and usually a question of whether you can prove it works. Timed check-in records, an ordered and logged escalation, and a tamper-evident audit trail let you evidence the controls a risk assessment and a COMAH safety case require, rather than asserting them. Vygard is built around that: the lone-working controls are designed to be demonstrable after the fact, not just present.